From Justice Thomas’s recent opinions on judicial deference and legislative delegation, to Chief Justice Roberts’s vocal criticism of the modern administrative state (“reams of regulations” that would leave the Framers “rubbing their eyes”), to Justices Scalia’s and Alito’s own doubts about judicial deference, to Ninth Circuit Judge Carlos Bea’s Heritage Foundation lecture on Chevron and the separation of powers, to his colleague Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain colorful criticism of modern administrative law (“we have spun out of the known legal universe and are now orbiting alone in some cold, dark corner of a far-off galaxy, where no one can hear the scream ‘separation of powers’”), to Professor Philip Hamburger’s vocal and influential criticism in Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (2014), judges and legislators are increasingly confronted with unflinching criticism of administrative law’s first principles.

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But one place where these criticisms seem to gain very little traction is legal academia, where the predominant response to these calls for administrative-law reform is probably best found by the title of Adrian Vermeule’s review of Hamburger’s book: